The Williams campus is in another idyllic town with a statue to the Civil War.

Equivalency?

A foreboding of things to happen here :

The Recent Neo-Nazi Murder Spree in Context

On April 3, 2013 in Griffin Hall, a talk by Freya Klier, “known for her criticism of communism and fascism, spends a good part of every year traveling to schools to teach the young generation about the GDR, and she also represents incarcerated writers for PEN. In 2012, Klier received the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany’s highest honor for civil service.”

DDF could be the subject of a subpoena for his leaks on President Falk.

“We respect the important role that the press plays, and we’ll give them respect, but it is not unlimited,” Sessions said. “They cannot place lives at risk with impunity. We must balance the press’s role with protecting our national security and the lives of those who serve in the intelligence community, the armed forces and all law-abiding Americans.” *

While my warning is addressed to my parochial interest of the world of Williams, I suppose I should give a shout-out to the NYT, WaPo, Politico,WSJ, MSNBC, CNN, the LA Times and others continuing to be a free press.

* There is no comma after the armed forces, Followers of some recent cases may be aware of the importance of inclusion/exclusion based on the use of the Oxford Comma.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

Any thoughts on the swing of a new political sway and possible effects on Williams?

Still, there is great reluctance, even discomfort, on the part of admissions offices to acknowledge race as a consideration in their evaluation process. Neither Brown nor Harvard explicitly does so, instead using words like “perspective” and “identity” to describe admissions considerations. Williams College, my own alma mater, doesn’t either, although on its website this fall, the percentage of students of color and those who are the first generation in their families to attend college is enlarged to about twice the size of the other demographic statistics.

Respect for our system of government and respect for our constitution is at a low point. Let us hope that this proven general with a lifetime of service to both will succeed in restoring the sense of confidence in our country’s leadership we deserve.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford, pictured here in March, wrote in the message to the chiefs of the services and senior enlisted leaders that the military will continue to “treat all of our personnel with respect.” | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Williams men and women have served and are serving in the military. US Army 1957-1959 for me. Our bone-spur President seems to have as little regard for military procedure as he has for the rule of law. How long, I wonder, until he receives a section 8.

ADDED PER DDF’S GREAT SUGGESTION (see comments below)

Senator Chris Murphy ’96 (D) Conn has made this powerful statement of his belief in the right to serve our country:

A Williams alum might find the story about Todd Ducharme (1994) of interest!! “Be Prepared” – the motto of the Boy Scouts, and a Tom Lehrer song, and a reminiscence about Football Coach Dick Farley are contained in this news note that reflects how Williams connections and experiences shape our lives.

Laurent de Brunhoff

… perhaps at the 2017 Gala Dinner of the American Library in Paris which recently honored biographer Stacy Schiff ’82.

Stacy Schiff, dubbed by Vanity Fair as “the hottest biographer in the block,” is also the author of Véra(Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry: A Biography, a Pulitzer Prize finalist about the French aviator and writer; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français de l’Amérique.

As part of the Exploring Diversity Initiative, this course examines the identities that Medieval and early modern Christians and others (for example, Jews and Muslims) imagined for each other and themselves in ways that still linger powerfully today–to give just one example, in Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa against the United States, which describes Americans as participants in the same “crusader campaigns” inaugurated by Pope Urban II at the dawn of the First Crusade in 1095. The course will be divided into three units: Inventing the West, Inventing the East, Inventing the Future. The first will explore the monstrous origins of England and Ireland as well as trace the attempts to create a united West through the crusades (as proclaimed by Urban II, and as witnessed by a Jew, Solomon Bar Samson, from massacred Mainz)

Happy Fourth of July!

Fall 2017 Cross-listed as HIST 354, PSCI 285

The American Revolution produced a galaxy of brilliant politicians, statesmen, and military leaders of extraordinary courage, intellect, creativity, and character: Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams. In this seminar, we will study their astounding accomplishments–

One can’t help but think of today’s incumbent in this perspective as we ready for Independence Day…